


My Favorite Blob on the Wireframe

by Ysavvryl



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abandoned Space Station, Adventure, Aliens, All Female Cast, Bad Flirting, Cyborgs, Established Relationship, F/F, space fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 19:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14677989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysavvryl/pseuds/Ysavvryl
Summary: Lydie can kick your ass seven ways to Sunday despite not having traditional sight, but her flirting is absolutely atrocious.  Joyce still loves her even though following along on her adventures leads to some unfortunate situations.





	My Favorite Blob on the Wireframe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Casylum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casylum/gifts).



> This pairing request is clearly meant to be fantasy oriented. But then 'AU-Genre Shift' was included in the genres, so why not make it a space fantasy? Hope you enjoy it!

The derelict Atropos drifted silently through the darkness, far from any star. The worrisome thing was that it was drifting with purpose. Every now and again, the station Lachesis could detect Atropos' engines giving a small burst, sending it their way. It had been assumed that Atropos had been lost in a battle against the Krille, around two Earth months ago. The crew of the Lachesis wanted Atropos surveyed and inspected, but they were considering it potentially dangerous in case the Krille had left some sleeper weapon aboard.

"Why did they have to wait until now to tell us of the suspected sleeper weapon?" Joyce asked aloud as she reviewed the updated mission notes. "We could have used some more time to prepare for who knows what is waiting on board?"

After a moment of quiet, her partner Lydie said, "They consider us expendable, ideal for the initial survey. They'll use us for an excuse to send in active military personnel."

"Ugh, one would think we'd have risen above expendable status by now," Joyce said, redoing her pod system checks with the higher level of danger in mind.

She was halfway through that when Lydie finally replied, "I like it. They send us to more interesting places."

"Well when we get through this, I am going to negotiate getting hazard pay or suing them for misrepresenting the mission data," she said.

While Lydie might not care about that, Joyce was the one responsible for their finances and knew just how expensive repairing or (God forbid) replacing any of Lydie's equipment was. That was custom-made cybernetics and the main engineer who had designed them was in jail for life because of that cyborg soldier project. That had been a great victory, but the remaining soldiers like Lydie needed special care and attention. For one thing, Lydie's sight had been entirely removed, replaced with a system that only detected movement, heat, and electronics within a wireframe map of her surroundings. She could see an enemy through a wall as a result, but could not see a person right in front of her as anything other than a moving source of heat.

Once Joyce was ready, they headed out. Lydie had her battle armor to protect her in the derelict station, while Joyce's research pod kept her safe. There were some systems still active in Atropos, but they hadn't been able to get a full read from their ship. Because of that, their first goal was reaching the either the engine room or the control room, if the latter had a working emergency generator. The records from crew members would be valuable towards discovering what had happened; the Lachesis researchers definitely wanted that. And if they could get the environment systems online, it would make investigating easier.

In the dock, one of the problems became immediately apparent. There were a number of human statues in strange poses scattered around the room. "What's with all the debris?" Lydie asked. Since they weren't moving, the statues would just be part of the terrain to her.

"It's a bunch of statues," Joyce answered, targeting her computer's scanner onto a nearby statue. "They seem strange to me, nothing that a normal person would want. And I can't think of a reason they'd have all of them out here in the dock. If they were shipping them for some reason, they wouldn't be scattered like this." The scan came up on the dashboard screen, with some strange characteristics.

Lydie went up to one of the statues and felt its head until she could find the face. "It does seem dreadful," she said.

"The mineral composition is strange," Joyce said. "Heavy on calcite and some strong enchantment remains. The interior..." she gasped as she recognized it. "That's a biologically accurate collection of organs. And the enchantment seems accurate to the Krille school of transformation."

"Then they turned these people into stone?" Lydie asked.

It was awful, but, "That would make sense. I'll register the enchantment and keep it on active alert. Hopefully, that should be enough of a warning for us if the trigger is still around."

Through emergency passages, it was going to be quickest to reach the engine room. There were other transformed people along the way, some in the hall as though caught by surprise, others in terror having been caught while hiding. In the walls, there were some hums from equipment that was still working. Some of it could be bare minimum systems, which would be required to be active to have the station move. A station of this size would automatically turn those systems on if the engines were activated.

Just before they reached the engine room, they came across a room in disarray. The doorway was already too narrow for her pod to travel through, but a file cabinet had been knocked over in front of it. And past that, there was a body unlike the others. "Lydie, is there anything you can see in that room to the left?" Joyce asked.

"No," she said.

"Well I see something unusual that I want a closer look at," she said, pulling out her filtration mask from its compartment. "There's a corpse that isn't petrified in there."

"I'll keep watch," Lydie said, stopping in the hall. She said a time or two that it helped to keep still on watch, to be less distracted.

She double-checked that she would be safe out there with just her base suit; there was a low amount of breathable air, low air pressure, and no other detected dangers. Joyce let the pod's doors slide aside so that she could leave her seat. The egg-shaped pod kept hovering as she entered the small room. Inside, it seemed like an engineer's private office and quarters, likely for the head engineer as it was so close to engine area.

But was this the chief engineer? Or did it matter? The strange matter was that there was a mass of dead snakes knotted up on top of the woman's head. The station would allow pets, but it was still odd. Joyce tried to move the snakes aside to get a better idea of how she had died. Then she realized that the snakes were sprouting out of the woman's scalp. It could be a strange cosmetic thing, although she thought it was a disgusting thing to do.

Something sparked green near her hands; that was usually a sign of Krille magic activation, the school of transformation… wait… some curses like this could go undetected…

Joyce's vision went green as the spell activated, warping her body.

* * *

Lydie came alert to something going wrong as a blurry haze appeared on the map around Joyce. It was how active magic appeared on her map. Normally, humans could not use magic like the Krille did. And Joyce did not have the modifications to do so. "What happened?" Lydie asked.

A bunch of hisses answered her. "Ah, I," her voice was shaky, unlike usual. "I should have scanned this room first; this corpse is cursed, um..." then she screamed.

Feeling an uncharacteristic sense of fear, Lydie went to the doorway of the room. "Joyce?"

"Don't look at me!" she screamed in a panic. Also uncharacteristic; this was a strange mission.

"I can't look at you," Lydie said plainly. "You're a blob on the wireframe to me."

"Oh, yeah, ha ha," she kept laughing like she was embarrassed.

Whatever was going on, Joyce needed to calm down. Lydie probably needed to calm down as well, since she was more worried than she should be. But how? She didn't have the training for this kind of thing. Maybe saying something nice? It was what Joyce would do. "You are my favorite blob on the wireframe."

"Lydie, oh my gosh," she said, laughing more normally. "Being called a blob usually isn't a compliment."

"I did say you were my favorite," she said. So compliments and jokes would work in another situation like this. Perhaps she should plan some just in case. "What happened?"

"Well," she took a deep breath, so Lydie waited. "The corpse wasn't petrified, but it was cursed to become a gorgon. Her hair has been replaced by snakes, as have mine because I touched her corpse and caused the corpse to transfer its curse to me. While I need to examine how all I've changed, the gorgons of legend turned people to stone through eye contact. If it's that way, you should be okay. Hmm, but this shouldn't be right."

"What could be right about that kind of curse?" Lydie asked.

"That is a good point, it is awful all around," Joyce said, sounding back to normal. "The thing is, gorgons are from our mythology. Not that of the Krille, at least of what I've studied of them. Why would they do this?"

"Psychological warfare," she said, since that was what made sense to her. "They can make our monsters real, so they want us to fear them and give up."

"That would fit their methods," she said. "Let me get some samples from this corpse for later study. Although, they would have a live sample in me. But more samples are better." Then she sighed.

"What's the matter?" Lydie asked. "You're acting unusual."

"I am cursed at the moment," Joyce said. "And part of that is this drone in my head, like the snakes are talking to me. They're telling me that I'm terrible and ugly. While I can argue against the terrible part, these snakes do make me rather ugly."

Since she only saw people as heat and electrical activity, words like ugly and beautiful didn't mean anything to Lydie. But they could mean an awful lot to others. After a moment, she thought of something. "Don't let the snakes sway you. I find your brain cute."

"What?" Joyce asked, puzzled.

"That is what I know best of you. Just yesterday, you were saying a cute funny thing, that crackers were just edible platters for cream cheese. You say things like that a lot."

She chuckled. "It's fun, although it's funny that you're saying my brain is cute. Brain usually isn't considered a cute word."

"It is appropriate," Lydie said. "Or that adventure we had on Hacroynix. You got so excited in explaining that the giant flowers around must be related to roses because of the petal arrangements and something about the soil composition affecting colors."

"It was because there were so many colors of them, but not blue," she said.

"That's what it was," she said. "And then you wanted to get a closer look, only it turned out that they were carnivores capable of locomotion that weren't picky about what they ate as long as it was meat. We were immediately surrounded; that was an epic fight. I had lots of fun being there with you."

"That was terrifying, but it was a thrill," Joyce said. "But now you're the one being strange, Lydie. You haven't ever flirted with me like this before. Although," she chuckled again, "I'm more than happy to let you practice."

This was more like her. "This curse is making you uncharacteristically negative," Lydie explained. "That is detrimental to our mission and your happiness. Since I have stumbled upon the discovery that flirtations or jokes can raise your spirits, it seems optimal to continue trying while you are cursed so that we may continue, or retreat to safety to see to undoing this curse. I am sorry if my efforts are limited, but I will continue trying."

"Aw, that's so sweet of you," she said. "And incredibly practical, which is more like yourself."

"Will it be necessary to retreat back to Lachesis?" she asked.

"If the voices of these snakes keep getting to me, it might be. That could compromise the mission. And I really want the station to report us as reliable and skilled mercs, not the expendables they think we are." She got up and headed back to her research pod.

"I hope they consider us worthy of dangerous situations still," Lydie said. Otherwise, she might get bored and have to find her own places to explore.

* * *

In the engine room, the petrified remains were one of the few visible signs that something was wrong. The power core was properly shielded and still running, giving off a low hum as little power was being used. There was a couple of chairs knocked over by some remains, a shattered mug with drink stains around it. Other than that, it seemed what happened here was sudden. If the cursed corpse was a part of the engineering crew, that explained this tableau of horror.

Joyce maneuvered her research pod near one of the work consoles in order to log into the station's system and download the records from the requested time period. Which was… two weeks prior to the Atropos' sudden silence onward. She also scanned the badge she'd taken from the cursed corpse to get an immediate search on her done.

"Lilian Roseshift," Joyce said aloud as she looked over the resulting employment profile. Something dipped down into her vision, a diamond-shaped snake head looking back at her. Waving it off, Joyce said, "Keep out of my face, snake, I'm working here. And… yup, Station Engineer rank two, Engine Room shift three supervisor for when the rank one engineers were asleep."

"Graveyard shift red shirt?" Lydie asked as she paused.

"That is a terribly portentous name," she agreed. "She was studying to pass the tests for rank one engineer… born and raised on space stations, may have only been on a planet surface a few brief times in her life. Yes, she has some pictures from a trip to China in her social posts. It says she saved up time and money to make the trip as her first time planetside because she was fascinated by the culture. Nothing about encountering the Krille that I can see skimming these posts. No wait, they were concerned about Krille activities, and had put the station on defensive watch."

"The Krille only need a small thing to get inside the station to put a curse like this on them," Lydie said. "Especially placing the curse upon a staff member who must have access to all areas of the station."

"True," Joyce said, still reading through Lilian's files for clues. Then something caught her eye. "Hmm? Huh, it looks like… her last posts match what I'm hearing from the snakes, but more crazed. Before that happens, though, she wrote about how the station took in a refugee ship, of Kaesan origins with one survivor on board, the rest of its crew dead. The Kaesan was put through decontamination, but she was disconsolate and gave them very little information of what she'd been through. Lillian was one of those who attempted to befriend her to make her feel more at ease while they were waiting on a ship to send her out of the danger zone around the suspicious Krille ships."

"That's standard, but could be how they got the curse into the station," Lydie said.

Joyce nodded. "It could be. But there's something more. The Kaesan homeworld has a season of fierce storm activity, enough that the native organisms evolved to hibernate through the dangerous months. As a result, the Kaesans themselves are naturals for hibernation travel. On top of that, they are natural psychics that used such abilities to ward off predators who hunt during the stormy season. I wonder if the Kaesan is still alive, just deep enough in hibernation that we could not detect her during the initial scans."

"So she was a spy."

"But I don't think Kaes allies with Krille?" Joyce said, having activated a different scan on herself. Even though magic was a part of human imagination, it was not native to them like with Kaesans and Krille. So if she was being influenced by a psychic, she didn't have the capacity to realize it naturally, only through logic and intuition.

And this really wasn't like herself. Sure, she would criticize herself at times. But that was a means to keep herself from repeating stupid mistakes. This was a stream of constant despair and self-loathing. 'I am hideous. I am a monster. I will destroy those around me. Help me. No, don't come near me, don't look at me! I am terrible. I am helpless. I cannot stop myself. Destroy me. No, don't destroy me, I'm afraid.'

"Is she trying to make me think this, or does she think this about herself?" Joyce wondered aloud, putting her hands to her forehead. One of the snakes rubbed against her knuckles. Thankfully, they didn't seem inclined to bite her. One had tried to bite Lydie earlier, but found that her armored suit broke its fangs.

"Does she need someone to make cheesy passes at her too?" Lydie asked.

Joyce smiled at that. As much as she loved Lydie, as much as she showed her what affection could be, Lydie was still someone who had been raised to thrive in dangerous environments and fight to the death even if she was outnumbered. She enjoyed cuddling and being kissed, but was slow to learn or do anything affectionate herself. So this was a nice change; Joyce hoped that she'd continue trying.

"I'm afraid I must refuse such activity as my cheese is only for you," she went on.

Unable to contain herself, Joyce laughed and hit a safe part of the console. "Lydie, that's awful! I mean, the sentiment is wonderful but the delivery was forced and the wording is easily mistaken."

"Very well, I'll do some research into it later," she said.

Had she been too harsh? "Well I don't mean to criticize you harshly," she said. "It was funny and it is working to distract from these thoughts.

"The critique does not bother me if it helps me improve," Lydie said. "I would most like to keep you happy."

"I am happy that you're doing this," Joyce said. The scan had finished, showing what she'd suspected. "Ah, got it! I am being telepathically contacted… not controlled, it's simply that the Kaesan's thoughts are getting mixed with mine. We should be able to triangulate the position of the Kaesan with a couple more scans in different places. From these thoughts, I have a hunch that she's a victim too."

After some thought, Lydie said, "If we take her back to Lachesis, she'll have to be put in heavy quarantine again until they're certain she is cleared of disease and curse. We'll have to be in heavy quarantine for the same reasons."

"Well that's better that then just leaving her here," she said.

* * *

By scanning for the psychic connection, they were able to locate the Kaesan within the habitation areas, in a guest quarters. Lydie automatically shifted her thoughts to an urban combat situation. Lots of narrow halls between closed off apartments, measures taken for privacy that gave plenty of hiding spots, locks everywhere… although here on Atropos, there were no civilians to worry about. Those had all been replaced by stone statues that were simply obstacles. Some seemed like they could make for decent cover in a firefight if it came down to it.

And there were some displaced thoughts running through Lydie's mind at a frantic pace; they made her tense since she generally didn't think that fast unless she was in battle. There were lamentations about being ugly, and begging to be saved only to beg to be left alone because of being hideous and unwillingly dangerous. "I'm hearing the psychic drone now," Lydie said.

"We are very close, as she's just ahead in the next apartment," Joyce said.

Lydie could tell that, and not because of the drone. "They left a guard near her," she said. It was long and put off a low heat in being inactive; there was some fuzziness to it too. "I'd guess a Krille millipede drone."

"Oh, there is a large magical presence in that room," Joyce confirmed. "And from these signs… I'd agree. It's sensible of them since it can curl its body around the Kaesan's cocoon."

"They're tough creatures due to their shells, but not too difficult to dispatch," Lydie said. "And it'd be easier in a space like that. I will take care of it."

"Be careful not to harm the Kaesan," Joyce warned.

"Certainly," she replied.

Joyce did trust her with such things, Lydie had heard it before. But as she could only perform a support role within battle, she often expressed her worry for her in such basic warnings. Such worries had mystified Lydie at first, since she was trained relentlessly for battle and only battle. But then, her previous trainer and supervisor had considered her truly expendable. Death was not to be feared, but failing a mission or failing to complete it was something to fear. But now, having someone who considered her invaluable, someone who would forgive a failed or aborted mission if it meant preserving her life, Lydie found those old ways callous. Basic warnings reminded her that there was more to look forward to in life than merely winning or losing a battle.

Holding a hand up to let Joyce know to hold still in her pod, Lydie approached the doorway to the guest apartment. The millipede drone in the apartment began to stir as she walked by; it would detect them going by with magic. She hurried along to open the door to begin her attack before it was fully alert. As it was covered in body armor, most shots wouldn't do anything to it. As it was enchanted, it could move around without being hindered by the armor.

But it was a large creature in a closed up space where it could not use its most effective strategies. The most it could do was take up much of the living, dining, and kitchen spaces of the apartment, try to shake her off, and try to stonewall their progress. As it was a living creature, it needed allowances to breathe and eat, as well as move its legs under the body armor. That gave it weaknesses.

Lydie's arm transmuted into a long blade that was designed to cut through metal and enchantments; she slashed that across the centipede's armor plates in order to take them off. From there, a burst of lightning meant to disrupt other magics was enough to fry the millipede drone from the inside. Easy-peasy. Now if it had time to prepare an area with tunnels to run around in, then it would be more fun to fight.

She checked the apartment for any other signs of movement or danger. "All clear on my end," she said as the communicator with her suit would relay that back to Joyce.

"Looks clear to me too, but I can't get the pod in there. How is the Kaesan?"

That was difficult for her to check on. Lydie jumped onto the millipede drone's back to drop down into the circle of space it was guarding. While she could detect traces of biological electricity and heat, she had to reach her hand out to feel another hard shell. "She's cocooned on the floor, in the middle of the millipede circling around her."

"Directly on the floor?"

Moving her hand downward, she came across something soft. "No, on a blanket."

"Oh good; the Kaesans adhere their shell to stay in their hiding place during hibernation. Her being on a blanket means that we can move her without trouble. Can you handle that on your own or do you want a couple of my drones to help?"

"If there wasn't a giant millipede in the way, I could take her out on my own," Lydie said. "Send the drones over."

"Okay, I'm releasing them."

Seconds later, little robotic blips flew into the room. They were meant for occasions like this, coming in to retrieve or move object in a space that the pod could not fly into and the pilot couldn't come out for. Lydie felt around until she could pull the blanket around the large cocoon. Then she had the drones pick up the corners at each end while she lifted it from the center. This way, they could take the cocoon back to their ship in the dock.

They set the Kaesan up in their clinic room as it held their health station. It also held the equipment needed to do maintenance and repairs on Lydie's mechanical systems, so it ended up more crowded than most clinic rooms on small explorer ships like theirs. As the health station held a database of biological information on the space-faring civilization that Earth knew of, it was able to scan the Kaesan and determine her state of health. Joyce handled that since it was quickest with someone who could see the screens and read them.

"She's wearing a booster collar that's amplifying her psychic abilities," Joyce said. "But this is weird; she doesn't have a normal body structure for a Kaesan."

"You don't have a normal body structure at the moment," Lydie reminded her. The snakes on Joyce's head kept moving around, sometimes leading to spats of hissing when a few got tangled up.

"True," Joyce admitted. "So huh… the Krille may have modified her to hold a curse that would trigger another curse in us. Your systems give you magical resistance, so contact with her or me shouldn't end up cursing you. It seems rather complicated."

"Their plan killed off an entire space station," she said, seeing the logistics behind it. "I would hypothesize that they turned her into a monster of their mythology that would kill off her crew, leaving her in a state where she couldn't think rationally. Then they added the curse to transform a human into a gorgon and gave her the psychic amplifier so that her grief and horror spread subconsciously through the Atropos while she was there. And then Lilian would have been the misfortune one trying to console her that ended up cursed herself. They may also have made the transfigured gorgons vulnerable to the psychic transmissions so that you both went crazy and transformed everyone around you just by visual contact."

"Hmm, and then they sent Atropos on a course to intercept Lachesis and kill everyone there too," Joyce said. "It's awful, but it does fit in their prior attacks. We knew the Krille were cruel from our first contact with them."

That was true. That first contact had been when a crew of Krille sorcerers descended upon a religious community, performed miracles that seemed in line with the Bible, then turned that community into cult worshipers who attacked others with a zealous disregard for their own lives. The Krille Cultists were still a major problem on Earth even after the sorcerers abandoned their worshipers. In fact, representatives of other planets would frequently ask each other if they'd had recent contact with the Krille, and then hold whoever answered 'yes' with suspicion as the Krille like to use other civilizations against each other.

"Let's get back to the Lachesis," Joyce suggested. "Lydie, I want you to warn them that we will need to be placed under immediate heavy quarantine, since the Krille magic might try to stop me from sending such a message to them. It will need to be a quarantine with psychic blockers to keep the Kaesan from affecting those in Lachesis. While there, we should have an easier time coaxing her out of hibernation so the both of us can have our curses studied to be undone."

"Very well," she said. Then, there was something she'd been thinking over. She would have dismissed it before, but it was still important to keep Joyce thinking positive… or at least keep her out of the negative thoughts the Kaesan was emitting. "Joyce?"

"Hmm, what is it?"

"If you can't turn me to stone by eye contact, and I'm harder to curse through touch, is there some kink to involving your snakes in intimacy?"

After a brief silence, Joyce burst out in laughter. "Oh, Lydie, Lydie… there's kinks for all kinds of things. Do you find that kind of thing sexy?"

"No, but it seemed logical," Lydie said. "And I don't find anything sexy in tying a person up and tickling them, but I have encountered that in a situation where both parties found it sexy." They'd both yelled at her for interfering; she still thought it was their fault for letting themselves be discovered in an easily misunderstood situation.

"Well I agree on both parts. Besides, you weren't touching her directly for long. Things could be very different under intimate circumstances." She made an exaggerated sigh. "Which means we should restrain ourselves, I guess."

"Then I will have to make it up to you when you are safe to touch again," she said, which made Joyce giggle.

* * *

Being put in heavy quarantine meant that they were to live in a converted warehouse outside of Lachesis itself. It had been made into a comfortable place, with robotic servants around to take care of them and bedrooms worthy of a resort. There was plenty around to occupy themselves with, including a large screen theater with a magnificent sound system and an up-to-date library of movies at hand. Of course, it also had a full clinical area to take care of the curse lifting and surgical adjustments that both Joyce and the Kaesan needed.

The Kaesan, who gave her name as Idrail, was still distraught over her experiences. She kept mostly to her room and the clinic, not saying much. But when Joyce was in the clinic getting the remains of the snakes removed, Lydie found Idrail in a sitting area not doing much. She might be looking out the massive window there which Joyce said showed a view of the Lachesis station and the gas giant planet that it was currently orbiting.

Whenever there was a chance, Joyce kept trying to make friends with Idrail. They were stuck here with each other for a couple more weeks, as long as they continued to come up clear of curses or infections in their daily checks. And since Lachesis now had records of the curses on both Idrail and Joyce, they weren't about to miss that like the crew of the Atropos had done. While Lydie usually left social interactions to her partner, she could see that it might help to show that she was willing to be friendly too.

"Excuse me," Lydie said as she approached Idrail, to show that she meant no hostilities. "Could I ask for your assistance?"

"Huh?" Idrail replied. Her heat signature showed that she was curled up in the corner of the couch; she must feel nervous.

Even though she hadn't gotten an answer, Lydie put forth her request. "They have a clothing store here as an appeal to normalcy. Would you help me to appear cute?"

"Huh?" She must be baffled now too.

"They're going to make Joyce bald to restore her to normalcy," she explained. "She has a buoyant spirit, but that may make her sad. As I love her, I do not wish her to be sad for long. I felt that perhaps appearing cute for dinner tonight may cheer her up." Then Lydie tapped the blindfold over her face. "But I have no eyes to know what a cute appearance entails. Would you assist me in this?"

"Koh?" she said.

Or rather, didn't say. Whatever Idrail had said was something that Lydie's translator unit couldn't find an English equivalent for. If she were around Kaesans more, her translator could adapt and use the 'koh' error word less often. Idrail should get a chirp from her translator to let her know of the error.

After a moment, Idrail said, "Are you certain of this? I think it's nice to want to please your mate, but beauty standards are different between worlds and nations. I don't know what would be seen as cute to humans like you."

"It doesn't much matter to me," she said. "I won't be able to see it. and whether she finds it cute or funny doesn't matter either. As long as it helps her stay happy, it's fine."

"That's nice," she said, getting up off the couch. "I suppose it would be fun. I'll give it a try."

As it turned out, Kaesans liked to adorn their protective shells with body paint and use flowery lightweight cloths to cover their more vulnerable body. Lydie had no shell, but she did have a bodysuit to protect her cyborg adaptations when she was without her usual armor. Once she loosened up, Idrail wanted to tie sparkly extensions to her short hair and put a near-transparent pink wrap over her dark bodysuit. The wrap was pinned into place, with the pins covered by silk versions of flowers native to Kaes. She even offered a pink blindfold to go better with the outfit.

Then Idrail wanted to get a new outfit for herself. Lydie couldn't help her with that, but she listened to the Kaesan explain about the different clothes they wore for different times of the year. They even had special outfits they used for courting, which Idrail said she used a simple variation on that for her. Joyce came over as they were in the middle of that discussion. "Huh, Lydie? What's up with that outfit?"

"I wanted to look cute for you, so I asked Idrail for help," she explained. "She gave me something they use for courtship. Does it work?"

She laughed and came over to take her hand. "Oh, yes! It's cute and elegant; it just surprised me at first because you look like a totally different person like this. Thank you, Idrail, you did great!"

"It was fun, so I'm glad," Idrail said, sounding happier than she had been.

* * *

While they had been in quarantine, the crew of the Lachesis had sent in a team to cleanse the Atropos of curses. It was in good enough shape that they wanted to recover the station and put it back into active service. A warning had gone out to other stations and ships of Earth's fleet to treat refugee ships like Idrail's with caution. While they wanted to help others who were in trouble, they didn't want a repeat of that tragedy.

When they got out, the director of Lachesis summoned them and Idrail to meet with her. "This is Karen Wells, an ambassador trained for high risk missions," the director said, introducing the woman with her. "We would like you to escort her and Idrail to Kaes in order to open negotiations for their planet to join our alliance."

"We haven't done so before because Kaes has been in a contested area between the Krille and the Norl," the ambassador said. "But if we could help set up a defense force around Kaes, it would benefit them, ourselves, and the Norlians. We hope it would encourage Norl to negotiate with us as well, although the Krille have made them very suspicious of other civilizations."

"That sounds like a good cause," Joyce said, feeling grateful that they were considered for this mission. Perhaps because they'd become friends with Idrail? Although she'd need to make sure the terms of this mission were good.

"I'm no good at negotiations," Lydie said. "But if you wish for me to keep them safe, I am capable of that."

"That would help because we suspect strongly that the Krille have a base on Kaes," Karen said. "We will attempt to be discreet about what we're doing but we need to be ready in case we're discovered."

After making sure that the terms of this mission were clear and not about to spring something nasty on them again, Joyce agreed to escorting Idrail and Karen to Kaes. She and Lydie had to go back to their ship right away to make sure it ready for a long trek with two guests. When they were inside on their own, Joyce asked, "Lydie, are you going to be okay with being ordered to stay your hand unless ordered otherwise or in emergencies?"

"It will be fine," she said. "It will be boring, but fine."

"I'm sorry, but this could be a tremendous leap forward for us," Joyce said, letting some of her excitement over this show. "They must trust and respect us greatly to leave the care of an ambassador and a refugee to us, and into a potentially dangerous region. And we'll get to be on Kaes! That's one of the planets that I definitely want to see and we could get a lot of time there for the negotiations to take place."

Lydie then reached for her shoulder, taking a moment to make sure her hand was there. "Then you can see all the sights and tell me about them along the way. It won't mean anything to me, but I'll be entranced by your energetic voice."

Joyce laughed, feeling a blush creep onto her face. "Of course, I'd love to do that for you."

At that, Lydie smiled for once. "Good, then I may consider that sufficient improvement?"

Joyce hugged her. "More than that, it's a great improvement."


End file.
